Forensics Helps ID Victims of Murderous Dictator Pinochet

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A new analysis of skeletons in a cemetery in Chile is helping
medical examiners and others identify those who were killed or
"disappeared" during the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto
Pinochet (1973–1990).

The results also may prove useful in identifying victims of the
Chile earthquake, the researchers say.

While complete and well-preserved skeletons are relatively easy
to identify, remains are often fragmented for natural or other
reasons, making them tricky to ID.

The Pinochet deaths were part of a regime mandate "to cleanse the
country of
socialist ideologies while raising new economic and social
programs," the researchers write in a forthcoming issue of the
journal Forensic Science International .

When he realized people were onto him, that he was burying people
in mass
graves, [Pinochet] would go back with excavators and take the
remains and dump them into the Pacific Ocean, study researcher
Ann Ross, an associate professor of sociology and anthropology at
NC State, told LiveScience. "Those were one of the major things
that hindered investigations."

That meant hundreds of bodies were left unidentified.

Whether or not the work will be useful in IDing victims from the
earthquake in Chile will depend on how complete those remains
are, since the equation would only be needed for fragmentary
remains, Ross said.

For the past decade, forensic researchers like Ross have been
developing identification criteria, such as height, build and
other physical characteristics that can vary significantly from
population to population and are important when attempting to
identify human remains.

In the new study, Ross and Maria Jose Manneschi of the University
of Chile, Santiago, evaluated remains of 139 females and 137
males from a 20th-century Chilean cemetery (Cementerio General at
the University of Chile)to find these population-specific
skeletal features. Then they developed stature criteria to
translate lengths of long bones, such as the femur or the arm's
tibia, into an individual's height.

Past methods for determining height are based primarily on
Europeans and these overestimate stature for Chileans, the
researchers found.

To figure out sex, the researchers measured the diameter of the
head of the upper arm bone (humerus), femur head diameter and the
circumference of the femur, resulting in accuracies of 87
percent, 86percent and 82 percent, respectively. This measure
would only be needed if the pelvis were not available, as would
be the case for fragmented remains from the Pinochet regime or
even a natural disaster that buries and scatters remains.

Ross said she is very excited that the Human Rights Program,
Medical Legal Service, Chile (Chilean government) is using the
results to identify Pinochet's victims.